Screamer

Great arcade racing with a banging OST

I don't really write reviews, but this game scratched something good in me. I beat the game story on keyboard only controls. -The Good: 1. Super stable. Not one crash or freeze, and I can count on one hand the number of times I had some kind of weird collision with terrain or another racer. Clearly the testers were doing their jobs with this one. 2. The story is a decent drama about you joining the tournament with intent to kill a racer on another team, and had a couple twists I didn't see coming. 3. The controls are quite engaging, in a way similar to Expedition 33(let me explain). In a turn based game, Expedition 33 found a way to give you something to do moment to moment, even during the enemy turn. In Screamer, while you're driving there is always something to do beside just steering the car: shifting up, boosting, striking, or controlling your drift. In most racing games you're just holding the gas and tapping left or right to stay on the road. 4. Car variety is good, with Hina(my beloved) being my favorite. The drifts I can pull off in that machine make me want to vomit a rainbow. Noboru is my second favorite, a bit lighter on the drifting, but super fast. -The Not So Good(Bad, depending on your taste): 1. Chapter 1 has too much story and not enough racing. Yeah, I get they are setting up the world and characters, but it's a bit of a slog. Once I made it into chapter 2 the story pieces became MUCH smaller, and it was much more enjoyable for me. 2. While the controls are engaging, the controls ARE a learning curve. You will need to really engage with the controls and play this game for a few hours to get the hang of it. Up shifting, drifting, boosting, and striking have individual inputs and will require some time to get accustomed to. It probably doesn't help that the cars of the Green Reapers are build more for speed than drifting, which can be a bit challenging. Don't forget to tap the handbrake to take tight corners. 3. Every teams cars handle differently, and you will have to progress through a good chunk of the game before you get to play with the cars of the other teams, such as Hina and Noboru. The changes between cars can be quite jarring to the point where the steering input for some cars does almost nothing, relying almost entirely on drifting to turn. Here is my personal breakdown of the various teams: Green Reapers: bad at drifting, ok at turning, good for speed. If you want to drift, let go of the throttle and throw yourself into the drift as hard as you can, then when you clear the corner punch the throttle. Jupiter Stormers: bad at speed, ok at drifting, good at turning. These cars turn left and right very easily without drifting, and the drifting is very light. Try to steer more, and drift less. SFR: good at drifting, bad at everything else. These cars handle like bricks on wheels, the left and right turn inputs do ALMOST nothing, and you MUST drift to make any kind of turns. These are my favorite, because the drifting is sick. Hina is the best. Anaconda Corp: My least favorite, their cars get huge boosts when striking, but kinda suck at everything else. Same as the reapers, drift early and hard, and ease up on the throttle if you want to make corners. Kagawa Kai: These are the most balanced, they turn ok, and drift pretty good. With the exception of Noboru that drifts like a maniac, and is second only to Hina. tl;dr I'm sure there is a character car in here that YOU personally will love driving/drifting, but you'll have to drive/drift a bunch of them before you find it. Overall, this game has heart. It's clear the devs were trying to do something different, and in many ways they succeeded. Unless you absolutely love racing games, wait until a sale so you can pick it up and dive into it to really absorb the controls. If you get the hang of the control scheme, you'll know before the refund window is up if you want to keep it.

Arrisco dizer, um dos MELHORES JOGOS DE CORRIDA DA ATUALIDADE que infelizmente muita gente não vai experimentar por causa do preço alto (concordo que é caro) mas se tiver oportunidade, NÃO DEIXE PASSAR

The same thing that makes us laugh, makes us cry.

Screamer despite being a racing game, it adds a lot of unique things, or at least things that you don't see often in this genre. An arcade racing full with style and content, reminds a lot of the old racing games. Right on the main menu you can already see how much personality this game have, with the UI being very unique and the main music being dynamic, changing a bit as you progress through the menus. In the beginning the gameplay seems a bit weird due using the two analogs of your controller, but you can quickly get used to that and learn how to play properly after a few races. The left analog is your normal steer while the right one is used for drifts. Another very important mechanic here is the manual changing of gears, if you shift in the correct time you will increase your nitro gauge, which you can use to boost your speed and increase the strike gauge, which can be used to strike the other racers (destroying their car) or simply using a shield on yourself to protect you. Here you select a character to play, with each having their unique car and unique skills, with also having dialogues during the race. There's a lot of stuff to unlock: several tracks and characters, which you can unlock everything by going on the story mode. The story mode it starts like is going to be just another simple story that is simply there just to say it have one, but it's actually very interesting and make you feel invested, caring about the characters and curious about what's going to happen next. It shows different sides, exploring each team's story, so you can understand the reason and why each one of them are in the tournament, having different twists as you progress, with the ending having a much bigger twist of events as well. It's also a very good mode to teach you each one of the mechanics, as they introduce them as you progress through the story. On Arcade Mode you're free to make your own rules, you can set the number of bots, laps, and change every rule about the boosts and skills, then you select any of the available characters and the tracks. It can be a team racing, leaders only or a complete free for all. You can randomly unlock tracks and characters on this mode too just by playing, as well different car parts. There's also several other modes like time attack, score challenge and overdrive challenge, those are some great extras modes to play that increases the replay value. It also includes photo mode where you can freely move the camera and take some cool pics of your car during the race or while watching the replay. One of the most cool and important thing for me is that they included a split screen mode. You can play up to 4 players in the same PC and also include bots. There's also the online multiplayer if you want to play with friends online. Last but not least, the music is simply great. Is so good to see a racing game where the music is original and made for the game itself. The main menu music changes the bits as you explore different other menus. During the races, each team have their own set of musics that fits their style, with a different intro before you start the race and a different ending as you check the final results. Screamer does a lot of what I was missing in the most recent racing games: having a personality and style, be in their aesthetic visuals, the character's designs and story, the gameplay with interesting mechanics and the original soundtrack. It ends being a very good and fun arcade racing game to me.

I've played all of my hours on the steam machine. (idk if there's an option for this yet) I love this game because it takes risks and provides an authentic story driven racing game with when the genre outside of the indies has mostly stagnated into sims or Forza Horizon-lite open world festivals. That said it's not perfect, the twin stick controls are frustrating at times, the story might not be for everyone and the base price is far too steep in this economic climate. But this game has soul, it's got heart and I really really hope we get some kind of follow up.

Um ótimo jogo de corrida estilo arcade, com visuais fascinantes, mecanicamente engajante e com uma história melhor do que a média para jogos desse gênero. Confesso que gostaria muito de um DLC ou sequência expandindo a história e os personagens.